New Facebook-iPhone App Raises Privacy Troubles
NEIRAD enilno edition
Imagine broadcasting your exact location to your friends on Facebook with just the click of a button. With Facebook Places, a new iPhone Facebook app released in August, users are able to check in at places and broadcast their location to their friends. Even though this new app sounds respectable, it isn’t exactly harmless. The American Civil Liberties Union instantly reported that this new app “failed to build in some other important privacy safeguards”, according to The New York Times. Unless you manually change this privacy setting, Facebook will automatically set to share your current “place” with all users. This means that all of your friends on Facebook can openly see where you are.
According to Junior Regan Bolotin, “That’s just an invasion of privacy.” Junior Emily Delora agrees, “I don’t really want every one of my friends on Facebook to know what I am doing; if I want someone to know where I am, I will just tell them.”
I’m sure many would rather not have every single one of their friends be able to see their location; it’s preferable that only our close friends know where we are, right? Well in order to make sure you set your check-ins for only your closest friends, and not all of Facebook, follow these easy steps to change your privacy settings:
- Go to your privacy settings page and select “edit your settings” under the “Applications and Websites” title in the lower left corner of the screen.
- Select “Edit Settings” next to “Info accessible to your friends.”
- Uncheck the “Places I check-in to” box.
With these three easy steps you’re not only allowing your most trusted network of friends to see your location but it’s easier for you to locate your friends because your network is smaller. “These directions were very easy to follow,” Delora said. Within three minutes or less, you will be able to ensure privacy and safety in who you share your present location.
So, while Facebook strives to battle against other internationally competitive sites such as Google by making its privacy policy less private, we as students shouldn’t go along with the new alterations.
According to The New York Times, “Earlier this year, the company faced harsh revisions to its platform and privacy policy that encouraged members to make personal details more broadly accessible on the Internet.”
It is only natural that these privacy alterations are met with scrutiny, especially in a society where Internet safety is an ever-growing problem. People all over the country face identity theft, stalking, threats and much more from strangers just because they didn’t privatize the information they post on a website, such as Facebook. It’s very important to make sure the personal information you put on the Internet is private to strangers, including some of your friends on Facebook. When using this new iPhone app, make sure to only let the people you want to see your location!
Many would immediately think that Facebook Places is a brand new idea in the social networking industry. This however, is completely false. Facebook got the idea of broadcasting its users location from a popular site called Foursquare. This site lets friends know where you are at the exact time you’re there. It’s also used for collecting points, prize "badges," and coupons for that store you ever-so-often visit. You can log onto the site and immediately see the exact locations of complete strangers all over the world under the Recent Activity title. For example, I logged onto this site and saw that, “Ancilla A. in Kuta, Bali: became the mayor of Room 508 Swissbell Hotel.”
By not even signing in to this site or even having to fill out a log-in application, I was able to know exactly where Ancilla A. was in Kuta, Bali was at that very minute. Even though this site takes on a whole new level of creepiness, people all over the world seem to think its ok to broadcast your location to anyone who owns a computer and has access to the Internet.
Even though Foursquare isn’t very popular in the 06820 zip code, beware of online social networking that involves providing an exact location. Facebook Places is very similar to Foursquare in that both give off personal information. The only difference is that Facebook Places has privacy settings which you can manually check-off. When using this new iPhone app, make sure to only let the people you want to see your location!
